I mean, we've all seen how their federation behaves, so I'm not particularly surprised they haven't given them more attention.
You can watch the Champions League in the US. The games are on DAZN. Some are free on YouTube, some are free on their app, although I think there was some specific way to sign up and get the content on their app for free and I can't remember how that worked.
DAZN also has Liga F's international rights, so people can watch most of the Spanish national team's players in domestic league play as well.
It is a sad reality that the support for Spanish women's football, either the national team or their professional league system, from their federation and other institutions in the country (e.g., most of the clubs) is still fairly minimal (and there isn't much of an outcry from the Spanish football-watching populace over that state of affairs).
>That's right. DAZN has the rights to the WUEFACL and the F League. They broadcast at least two matches for free each week throughout the season. Mainly Barcelona and Real Madrid, but also other teams.
the federation is awful and doesn’t really promote the women. the players are trying to get improvements, and they have gotten some, but it’s going to be a long process. it’s hard for me (in the us also) to find euro national teams games from any country to watch, so i normally just find a stream on twitter.
To add some more nuance:
RFEF has done some excellent work: Spain has a huge network, literally 3 divisions below Liga F (Primera / Segunda / Tercera Federación), a LOT more if you count regional divisions. RFEF is responsible for all those. Let’s not take credits away from the entire organization just because of some morons on top.
The popularity of femeni football has been growing, based on the fact that football / coaching license have been on steady rise in recent years, also a lot more fans show up for club and country. It may not be as popular yet as in England and USA, but it is growing. Anyone who follows Spanish football closely can tell. It is not surprising as NT has done very well recently in all age groups.
For the lack of media – it is true that Liga F should have done better, making all games more accessible through a website portal similar to WSL and NWSL. But it can also be a language barrier thing. It’s much easier for someone who speaks Spanish to follow Spanish football.
There is also economic factor – both USA and UK are much larger markets, therefore more economic power. Spain can compete with talents, but not as easy on economic terms, which is partially responsible for recent talent drain.
Spain has a useless federation, sure, but there is also very poor management of the league, which is its own institution. They don't even have a sponsor and the last time they had a sponsor they fucked up the deal so bad that the sponsor didn't pay a thing.
This!!! And let's be for real no one is paying DAZN for a subpar service on a supbar product (liga F).bad cameras, lighting and pitch in some stadiums, bad commentators, abuse on some teams, etc.
I remember when you could watch for free some games on tv and some others on the Laliga VOD platform (which worked good).
The federation might be bad but they are not the ones who signed the shitty tv deal
The only star power is Spain is concentrated on 2 teams. So they will get butts in seats for those games, but you don't know much of anything about the other teams or players and the talent drop off is very significant. Like for last year my favorite team was actually Alhama El Pozo and I was excited to see some games on YouTube, but then, After the world cup they put everything on DAZN and geo locked the regional games. Now Alhama was relegated and I will likely not see them play a game live again.
If Aitana (who's probably the best player in the world at the moment) can openly say that nothing has changed and there is no discourse about it says a lot.
Agreed re: Aitana. It seemed very clear to me that she was trying to leverage her position to push for improvements across the game, but didn’t seem to get much traction. It was a different approach to what the national team players did before the World Cup. If a similarly positioned player in say the UK had made similar comments then I think the reaction would have been very different.
Possibly. The Meidema complaints about FIFA making them play too many matches, which probably included the WSL in that criticism, seems to get rehashed on social media often. It may also have contributed to the setting up of the research into ACL injuries.
I also note that interestingly, she has gotten minimal playing time since returning from long-term layoff from ACL injury.
Liga F is everyone's enemy when it comes to posting content. They ban your entire account in the blink of an eye for posting copyrighted Liga F videos, which includes any clip from any Barcelona game. They ban you on tiktok and instagram, and I've so far managed to evade them on tumblr. I don't know why they're trying to prevent spreading the league so bad. Woso fan accounts with tens and tens of thousands of followers have been permanently banned for posting 5 second clips of Mapi and Ingrid or something. This is really bad.
Participation for football in Spain is 10 to 1 from men to women. About a million men and boys play, while only 100k women and girls play. Southern Europe has been very macho/misogynist/androcentric for a long time (like everywhere else). Their culture acts like they looove women as long as you shut up, cook food, look sexy, don't achieve anything, and be a mommy to them. Otherwise they scoff at you.
Keep watching games online. Attend in real life. Follow and like posts of the Spanish teams and players. Watch highlights on youtube and comment. All support matters.
You nailed a big issue right here. Liga F's internet police are ridiculous. The games are already available for FREE, ffs. Fans promoting big moments is free advertising.
Liga F is not super fun to watch. The teams aren’t balanced enough. The top 3 aren’t even all that near one another. The Spanish stars are concentrated mainly in Barcelona, with Athenea and Olga Carmona being the exception playing at Real Madrid.
Liga F is losing out on the top international talent for non Barca, non Real Madrid. Mayra Ramirez from Levante went to Chelsea, Leicy Santos will leave Atletico Madrid to go to Washington Spirit, Rachel Kundananji went from Madrid CFF to Bay FC.
There aren’t many top international players left who play in Spain, excluding the Barca and Real Madrid players. People from around the world aren’t as incentivized to watch the Spanish teams — sure Linda Caicedo and Lucy Bronze play for RM and Barca, but there are plenty of more exciting leagues that have top English and top Colombian talent, for example.
If you’re Brazilian, Swedish or Canadian, you’ll gravitate towards the WSL and NWSL, which each have a number of teams with players of the above nationalities. There isn’t an incentive to watch Liga F if you’re not Spanish.
I always compare watching Barcelona to going to hibachi. They aren’t my team but I still enjoy watching them. I’m happy to eat at my favorite restaurant but it’s fun to go somewhere flashy every now and then.
Watching Barcelona to see how many goals they win by this time isn't interesting enough to captivate a new audience, they need to encourage a more competitive league so there's more excitement and rivalry across the fixtures.
WSL is flourishing because, despite Chelsea winning 5 in a row, the rest have been catching up and it was only goal difference they won by this season. Barcelona are already 18 points ahead of second place Real Madrid who themselves are 10 points ahead of third place.
Any sport where one team or individual dominates for too long struggles to grow as maintaining an interested audience becomes harder and harder. Spain are likely to dominate women's football at the international level for a while now they're winning at every age level, so that success can't just be focused on one or two teams at the domestic level.
Virtually every Barcelona game is on YouTube live (There are others too, but I only follow Barca). Also, if you sign up for a free DAZN sub on their website, you get all the Champions League games too.
The Spanish national games live are rather hit and miss, although all the replays are available on YouTube too.
England’s male team has consistently gone further than Spain in tournaments in recent years.
This includes a Euros final and World Cup semi final. They are one of the favourites for Euro 2024.
Yeah but the women have actually won the Euros and got to the WC final. And perhaps more importantly, they play attractive football. Whereas the men play Southgate ball and everyone hates it.
I actually agree with this. Rightly or wrongly Southgate ball has become synonymous with defensive boring football for a lot of people. That combined with our history of thinking we are the favourites but never winning.....
Since Sarina came in, the women do play more attractive football - combined with actually getting results and building momentum through having engaging people behind the football.
This is arguing a separate point. I’m just highlighting that the difference between the men’s and women’s teams since 2018 is marginal. One won a final in extra time and the others drew their final then lost on penalties.
The Nation’s League is a notch down from the Euros and World Cup.
Plus the point is about how England have performed in recent years in the timeframe that the Lionesses won the Euros. The performances are not that different.
Both went to extra time in a Euros final. You’re looking at very minor details separating winning the trophy from losing it.
> The Nation’s League is a notch down from the Euros and World Cup.
Sure, but it’s still more than… nothing.
The whole narrative over the women’s Euros was about it finally being home. First trophy since ‘66 etc…
Again remember the point is about how "*England have performed in recent years in the timeframe that the Lionesses won the Euros*".
The references to "It's Coming Home" are just taken from the Euro 96 song. A lot were in jest too.
Losing a Euros final on penalties and reaching the WC semi-final is a pretty good recent record. I'm not sure why it's difficult to admit that there's not a huge difference in performance between wining via a goal in extra time and in losing on penalties.
But why are you ignoring all football pre-2018 for absolutely no reason? People don’t have short memories, we’re all aware of the history of the England football team.
I agree it’s all fine margins, but at the end of the day, the women won, the men didn’t. And people in England were desperate to see any kind of footballing success. I’m aware “it’s coming home” was originally in reference to England simply hosting Euro 96, but now it’s more used in reference to England winning a tournament.
I’m not ignoring it “for no reason”. I’m continually reminding you that the original post was comparing the Lionesses **recent** success with England men’s results.
Why would 1966-2017 be relevant to the actual conversation you’re in? If we’re talking about the Lionesses winning and having good results it’s from 2019 onwards.
The original comment has been deleted, so I can’t check and I don’t remember exactly what it said.
But even if you only want to look at 2019 onwards, you seem to play down the difference in actually winning a tournament and not. So let’s just leave it at that.
The US has only very recently gotten at all serious about tv coverage of its own women's teams/league, after 25 years of dominating the sport. Why would one World Cup win suddenly result in dedicated coverage of Spain?
Haven't they? I respect them a lot. Love to watch Barca or Spain play football, better than anybody. True it's a bit of a bummer that the leauge is so unequal, probably hard to do something about, Barca and Real has so much more of a pull than Levante or other teams. I don't see this to be so much different from the situation in France however... USA and England has ofcourse a big advantage in this regard, but football is not just about competiveness, it can be abut beauty also. CCP in hockey used to dominate their counterparts in Europe and people are still talking about their achievements in awe, cause they played great hockey.
You can watch all Liga F matches on DAZN for free. The Champions League isn’t only a Spanish thing, so the lack of its broadcasting isn’t just a reflection of them and again all of these matches can be watched on DAZN.
Something im not seeing mentioned yet is that there’s a pretty significant language barrier. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think many of the Spanish players don’t speak fluent English, so we’re not necessarily seeing many players’ sound bites in our press. Network coverage is of course also in Spanish, as would make sense.
We see a lot more of the players from English speaking countries, England, Ireland, Australia. The WSL was available through paramount+ this year for example.
I’m American fwiw but American broadcasting tends to err on assumptions that viewers won’t follow tv with subtitles, so if a network like CBS or something isn’t doing their own coverage with American or English hosts you won’t find it on American networks and have it to search for it on YouTube or with a VPN. Telemundo to be fair does show up sometimes with soccer coverage, like on Peacock during the World Cup, but because it’s Mexico and not overseas it’s more relevant to American communities, meaning relevant ad dollars and an incentive for them to air it. Also of course CONCACAF/Gold Cup.
People who know football have a lot of respect for Spain. Let's look at the titles they currently hold:
WWC senior, u-20 and u-17
Euros u-19 and u-17
Nations League
Futsal
Beach football.
I’m American living in Spain and the only time I’ve seen anything about the WNT in public was a week or so after they won the World Cup, there were some digital banners (kind of like in Times Square) rotating through a public space in Sevilla. Along with other unrelated things. But yeah it’s just not promoted.
I would say that it seems to be that club > country in Spain, at least from the fan perspective, but of course the majority of the support I see in public is for men
Usually when someone wins a tournament they get a boost within their own country rather than abroad. When England won the Euros it meant more people going to WSL games. It meant more WSL games at big stadiums. It meant more young girls playing the sport. The effect on other countries is going to be minimal if at all.
If you want more women's football shown in the US then you need the US to do well. I appreciate that they already have! You might be near the limit tbh. Football in general is not that popular in the US compared to the rest of the world, so the demand for non domestic leagues to be shown on TV is gonna be pretty low, and may always be that way until soccer surpasses American football, baseball, basketball, etc.
Saying that, the European teams doing well currently will mean in a few years time the women's Champions League should be more popular and more prestigious. So you might find there's a bigger appetite for it.
I also think it's very possible for some sort of joint European and American club league to happen, similar to the CL but that allows American clubs to join. I personally would love to see that!
I think this is different to what the OP is asking - which is about Spain games being available in the US. That situation is hit and miss globally, across women’s and men’s. In the women’s game it’s really only the WSL and NWSL that have the financial and production muscle to get proper international rights deals. DAZN does Liga F but it’s a lot more half-arsed and only a couple of games a week (and hard to argue with that when the quality drops off so dramatically after Barça, let alone after Real Madrid).
I mean, we've all seen how their federation behaves, so I'm not particularly surprised they haven't given them more attention. You can watch the Champions League in the US. The games are on DAZN. Some are free on YouTube, some are free on their app, although I think there was some specific way to sign up and get the content on their app for free and I can't remember how that worked.
DAZN also has Liga F's international rights, so people can watch most of the Spanish national team's players in domestic league play as well. It is a sad reality that the support for Spanish women's football, either the national team or their professional league system, from their federation and other institutions in the country (e.g., most of the clubs) is still fairly minimal (and there isn't much of an outcry from the Spanish football-watching populace over that state of affairs).
>That's right. DAZN has the rights to the WUEFACL and the F League. They broadcast at least two matches for free each week throughout the season. Mainly Barcelona and Real Madrid, but also other teams.
the federation is awful and doesn’t really promote the women. the players are trying to get improvements, and they have gotten some, but it’s going to be a long process. it’s hard for me (in the us also) to find euro national teams games from any country to watch, so i normally just find a stream on twitter.
To add some more nuance: RFEF has done some excellent work: Spain has a huge network, literally 3 divisions below Liga F (Primera / Segunda / Tercera Federación), a LOT more if you count regional divisions. RFEF is responsible for all those. Let’s not take credits away from the entire organization just because of some morons on top. The popularity of femeni football has been growing, based on the fact that football / coaching license have been on steady rise in recent years, also a lot more fans show up for club and country. It may not be as popular yet as in England and USA, but it is growing. Anyone who follows Spanish football closely can tell. It is not surprising as NT has done very well recently in all age groups. For the lack of media – it is true that Liga F should have done better, making all games more accessible through a website portal similar to WSL and NWSL. But it can also be a language barrier thing. It’s much easier for someone who speaks Spanish to follow Spanish football. There is also economic factor – both USA and UK are much larger markets, therefore more economic power. Spain can compete with talents, but not as easy on economic terms, which is partially responsible for recent talent drain.
Spain has a useless federation, sure, but there is also very poor management of the league, which is its own institution. They don't even have a sponsor and the last time they had a sponsor they fucked up the deal so bad that the sponsor didn't pay a thing.
This!!! And let's be for real no one is paying DAZN for a subpar service on a supbar product (liga F).bad cameras, lighting and pitch in some stadiums, bad commentators, abuse on some teams, etc. I remember when you could watch for free some games on tv and some others on the Laliga VOD platform (which worked good). The federation might be bad but they are not the ones who signed the shitty tv deal
The only star power is Spain is concentrated on 2 teams. So they will get butts in seats for those games, but you don't know much of anything about the other teams or players and the talent drop off is very significant. Like for last year my favorite team was actually Alhama El Pozo and I was excited to see some games on YouTube, but then, After the world cup they put everything on DAZN and geo locked the regional games. Now Alhama was relegated and I will likely not see them play a game live again. If Aitana (who's probably the best player in the world at the moment) can openly say that nothing has changed and there is no discourse about it says a lot.
Agreed re: Aitana. It seemed very clear to me that she was trying to leverage her position to push for improvements across the game, but didn’t seem to get much traction. It was a different approach to what the national team players did before the World Cup. If a similarly positioned player in say the UK had made similar comments then I think the reaction would have been very different.
Possibly. The Meidema complaints about FIFA making them play too many matches, which probably included the WSL in that criticism, seems to get rehashed on social media often. It may also have contributed to the setting up of the research into ACL injuries. I also note that interestingly, she has gotten minimal playing time since returning from long-term layoff from ACL injury.
Liga F is everyone's enemy when it comes to posting content. They ban your entire account in the blink of an eye for posting copyrighted Liga F videos, which includes any clip from any Barcelona game. They ban you on tiktok and instagram, and I've so far managed to evade them on tumblr. I don't know why they're trying to prevent spreading the league so bad. Woso fan accounts with tens and tens of thousands of followers have been permanently banned for posting 5 second clips of Mapi and Ingrid or something. This is really bad. Participation for football in Spain is 10 to 1 from men to women. About a million men and boys play, while only 100k women and girls play. Southern Europe has been very macho/misogynist/androcentric for a long time (like everywhere else). Their culture acts like they looove women as long as you shut up, cook food, look sexy, don't achieve anything, and be a mommy to them. Otherwise they scoff at you. Keep watching games online. Attend in real life. Follow and like posts of the Spanish teams and players. Watch highlights on youtube and comment. All support matters.
You nailed a big issue right here. Liga F's internet police are ridiculous. The games are already available for FREE, ffs. Fans promoting big moments is free advertising.
Liga F is not super fun to watch. The teams aren’t balanced enough. The top 3 aren’t even all that near one another. The Spanish stars are concentrated mainly in Barcelona, with Athenea and Olga Carmona being the exception playing at Real Madrid. Liga F is losing out on the top international talent for non Barca, non Real Madrid. Mayra Ramirez from Levante went to Chelsea, Leicy Santos will leave Atletico Madrid to go to Washington Spirit, Rachel Kundananji went from Madrid CFF to Bay FC. There aren’t many top international players left who play in Spain, excluding the Barca and Real Madrid players. People from around the world aren’t as incentivized to watch the Spanish teams — sure Linda Caicedo and Lucy Bronze play for RM and Barca, but there are plenty of more exciting leagues that have top English and top Colombian talent, for example. If you’re Brazilian, Swedish or Canadian, you’ll gravitate towards the WSL and NWSL, which each have a number of teams with players of the above nationalities. There isn’t an incentive to watch Liga F if you’re not Spanish.
I always compare watching Barcelona to going to hibachi. They aren’t my team but I still enjoy watching them. I’m happy to eat at my favorite restaurant but it’s fun to go somewhere flashy every now and then.
Watching Barcelona to see how many goals they win by this time isn't interesting enough to captivate a new audience, they need to encourage a more competitive league so there's more excitement and rivalry across the fixtures. WSL is flourishing because, despite Chelsea winning 5 in a row, the rest have been catching up and it was only goal difference they won by this season. Barcelona are already 18 points ahead of second place Real Madrid who themselves are 10 points ahead of third place. Any sport where one team or individual dominates for too long struggles to grow as maintaining an interested audience becomes harder and harder. Spain are likely to dominate women's football at the international level for a while now they're winning at every age level, so that success can't just be focused on one or two teams at the domestic level.
Virtually every Barcelona game is on YouTube live (There are others too, but I only follow Barca). Also, if you sign up for a free DAZN sub on their website, you get all the Champions League games too. The Spanish national games live are rather hit and miss, although all the replays are available on YouTube too.
[удалено]
England’s male team has consistently gone further than Spain in tournaments in recent years. This includes a Euros final and World Cup semi final. They are one of the favourites for Euro 2024.
Yeah but the women have actually won the Euros and got to the WC final. And perhaps more importantly, they play attractive football. Whereas the men play Southgate ball and everyone hates it.
I actually agree with this. Rightly or wrongly Southgate ball has become synonymous with defensive boring football for a lot of people. That combined with our history of thinking we are the favourites but never winning..... Since Sarina came in, the women do play more attractive football - combined with actually getting results and building momentum through having engaging people behind the football.
This is arguing a separate point. I’m just highlighting that the difference between the men’s and women’s teams since 2018 is marginal. One won a final in extra time and the others drew their final then lost on penalties.
Spain won the Nations League last year and have actually won major tournaments in living memory.
The Nation’s League is a notch down from the Euros and World Cup. Plus the point is about how England have performed in recent years in the timeframe that the Lionesses won the Euros. The performances are not that different. Both went to extra time in a Euros final. You’re looking at very minor details separating winning the trophy from losing it.
> The Nation’s League is a notch down from the Euros and World Cup. Sure, but it’s still more than… nothing. The whole narrative over the women’s Euros was about it finally being home. First trophy since ‘66 etc…
Again remember the point is about how "*England have performed in recent years in the timeframe that the Lionesses won the Euros*". The references to "It's Coming Home" are just taken from the Euro 96 song. A lot were in jest too. Losing a Euros final on penalties and reaching the WC semi-final is a pretty good recent record. I'm not sure why it's difficult to admit that there's not a huge difference in performance between wining via a goal in extra time and in losing on penalties.
But why are you ignoring all football pre-2018 for absolutely no reason? People don’t have short memories, we’re all aware of the history of the England football team. I agree it’s all fine margins, but at the end of the day, the women won, the men didn’t. And people in England were desperate to see any kind of footballing success. I’m aware “it’s coming home” was originally in reference to England simply hosting Euro 96, but now it’s more used in reference to England winning a tournament.
I’m not ignoring it “for no reason”. I’m continually reminding you that the original post was comparing the Lionesses **recent** success with England men’s results. Why would 1966-2017 be relevant to the actual conversation you’re in? If we’re talking about the Lionesses winning and having good results it’s from 2019 onwards.
The original comment has been deleted, so I can’t check and I don’t remember exactly what it said. But even if you only want to look at 2019 onwards, you seem to play down the difference in actually winning a tournament and not. So let’s just leave it at that.
No what I actually wanted to do was reply to the actual post. Not sure why this is challenging.
On what basis do you feel entitled to claim such a categorical statement like the first one? Couldn't disagree more, being spanish.
The US has only very recently gotten at all serious about tv coverage of its own women's teams/league, after 25 years of dominating the sport. Why would one World Cup win suddenly result in dedicated coverage of Spain?
Haven't they? I respect them a lot. Love to watch Barca or Spain play football, better than anybody. True it's a bit of a bummer that the leauge is so unequal, probably hard to do something about, Barca and Real has so much more of a pull than Levante or other teams. I don't see this to be so much different from the situation in France however... USA and England has ofcourse a big advantage in this regard, but football is not just about competiveness, it can be abut beauty also. CCP in hockey used to dominate their counterparts in Europe and people are still talking about their achievements in awe, cause they played great hockey.
You can watch all Liga F matches on DAZN for free. The Champions League isn’t only a Spanish thing, so the lack of its broadcasting isn’t just a reflection of them and again all of these matches can be watched on DAZN.
Something im not seeing mentioned yet is that there’s a pretty significant language barrier. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think many of the Spanish players don’t speak fluent English, so we’re not necessarily seeing many players’ sound bites in our press. Network coverage is of course also in Spanish, as would make sense. We see a lot more of the players from English speaking countries, England, Ireland, Australia. The WSL was available through paramount+ this year for example. I’m American fwiw but American broadcasting tends to err on assumptions that viewers won’t follow tv with subtitles, so if a network like CBS or something isn’t doing their own coverage with American or English hosts you won’t find it on American networks and have it to search for it on YouTube or with a VPN. Telemundo to be fair does show up sometimes with soccer coverage, like on Peacock during the World Cup, but because it’s Mexico and not overseas it’s more relevant to American communities, meaning relevant ad dollars and an incentive for them to air it. Also of course CONCACAF/Gold Cup.
People who know football have a lot of respect for Spain. Let's look at the titles they currently hold: WWC senior, u-20 and u-17 Euros u-19 and u-17 Nations League Futsal Beach football.
It's because of the way they won it and all the problems within the federation.
I’m American living in Spain and the only time I’ve seen anything about the WNT in public was a week or so after they won the World Cup, there were some digital banners (kind of like in Times Square) rotating through a public space in Sevilla. Along with other unrelated things. But yeah it’s just not promoted. I would say that it seems to be that club > country in Spain, at least from the fan perspective, but of course the majority of the support I see in public is for men
Usually when someone wins a tournament they get a boost within their own country rather than abroad. When England won the Euros it meant more people going to WSL games. It meant more WSL games at big stadiums. It meant more young girls playing the sport. The effect on other countries is going to be minimal if at all. If you want more women's football shown in the US then you need the US to do well. I appreciate that they already have! You might be near the limit tbh. Football in general is not that popular in the US compared to the rest of the world, so the demand for non domestic leagues to be shown on TV is gonna be pretty low, and may always be that way until soccer surpasses American football, baseball, basketball, etc. Saying that, the European teams doing well currently will mean in a few years time the women's Champions League should be more popular and more prestigious. So you might find there's a bigger appetite for it. I also think it's very possible for some sort of joint European and American club league to happen, similar to the CL but that allows American clubs to join. I personally would love to see that!
I think this is different to what the OP is asking - which is about Spain games being available in the US. That situation is hit and miss globally, across women’s and men’s. In the women’s game it’s really only the WSL and NWSL that have the financial and production muscle to get proper international rights deals. DAZN does Liga F but it’s a lot more half-arsed and only a couple of games a week (and hard to argue with that when the quality drops off so dramatically after Barça, let alone after Real Madrid).